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7.29.2014

The Albert Merola Galleryis a lovely small space in Provincetown’s East End,
perfect for showing small (and sometimes not so small) work. The tiny back gallery was the perfect setting—intimate and quiet—for Helen Miranda Wilson’s modestly scaled gouaches in an exhibition titled Wavy, Wiggly Ones.

Still life with painting and postcard

Mexicana, 2011, gouache on paper, 8 x 7 inches

After painting landscapes and other images of the
natural world for some years, Wilson
turned to abstraction about a decade ago. Her paintings are nevertheless
teeming with allusions to and invocations of the rhythms, vibrations and cycles
of an observed environment. (A Cape Cod native, she keeps bees, and as a member of her town’s Shellfish
Advisory Board is keenly aware of coastal life and cycles.)

Panorama of three walls

Click image for a larger view

I’m smitten with Wilson’s color, rendered fluid and rich in gouache. I’m posting this report to follow the one on Debra Ramsay. While both artists make work about what they observe in nature, the results are quite different; however the range and depth of their observation—and indeed, their palette—would appear to share common roots.

7.25.2014

I've got two more Summer Solo posts waiting in the wings, but here I want to show your some images from the splendid show Color as Structure, which is on view at McKenzie Fine Art on the Lower East Side through Saturday, August 2.

Panorama of the gallery

(click to enlarge)

In an exhibition of wall-hung work, gallerist Valerie McKenzie has selected 16 artists for whom color and structure intertwine, either to create a suggestion of dimensional space or to invigorate a planar surface with pattern, repetition, or optical effects.

We're going to follow the arc of the panoramic view shown at the top of the post. Here, Kate Shepherd, Paul Corio, four by Jason Karolak

Kate Shepherd: Chunk Logo, laser-cut screen print

Paul Corio: Megalicious, acrylic on canvas

Continuing our tour of the front gallery: Karolak, Rob De Oude on the left wall; Don Voisine on near facing wall, center right; Cordy Ryman; a glimpse of Elise Ferguson, right

While all of the works are strong individually and offer a cogent visual narrative as installed, I found myself drawn to the conversations between and among certain works. For instance, the linear dimensionality of Jason Karolak's architectural compositions offer an airy counterpoint to Deborah Zlotsky's weighty shapes inhabiting a similar pictorial space (scroll to see her work).

Don Voisine anchors two walls with geometric paintings flat as can be, which open up to reward the viewer with a dip into their chromatic and compositional depths. And I am taken with a corner conversation between Elise Ferguson's fresco-like painting, suggestive of a mural fragment, and Martha Clippinger's shaped construction, both with knife-sharp angles and intersections.

Martha Clippinger: Converge, acrylic and oil on wood
Image from the gallery website

Continuing the arc of the front gallery: Miller, De Oude, Deborah Zlotsky

Deborah Zlotsky: Indoor Voice, oil on canvas

Image from the gallery website

Let's venture into the middle and back galleries . . .

Richard Roth: A trifecta of color and structure

Relief sculptures--or are they sculptural paintings?--by Richard Roth punctuate the planar rhythm of the installation with striped and stacked color that slides around to the sides of the box-like constructions. Their modest proportions are perfect for what's taking place visually on each one, and for the way the artist's ideas jump from one to the other. The visual repartee with Mel Bernstine's flat but architectural paintings is snappy and smart.

There's more, which you'll will see as you scroll--or, better, if you get to the gallery to see for yourself.

Richard Roth: Still Under the Influence, acrylic on birch plywood

Above: Still PairingBelow: Slap Happy

Mel Bernstine: Feminina, acrylic on linen

View from the back gallery looking toward the front, with from left, Richard Roth, Richard Caldicott, Mel Bernstine

Turning again to face the backmost part of the gallery: Holly Miller, Kate Shepherd, Paul Corio, Don Voisine

Holly Miller: Bend #7, acrylic and thread on canvas

Image from the gallery website

Don Voisine: Aeriel, oil on wood panel

On the right wall of the back gallery: Alan Biltereyst, Cordy Ryman, Maureen McQuillan

There are some works for which images will not suffice, even with details. McQuillan's paintings are a case in point. Layers of ink and acrylic polymer are built up by the artist to have an optical depth far greater than the material itself. Rob De Oude, who paints in oil with the thinnest of brushes on a flat surface, weaves a network of layers to atmospheric effect. Holly Miller imbues her geometries with thread.

Continuing along the back gallery, looking toward the front with work by Richard Garrison and Cordy Ryman

7.22.2014

When is a walk in the woods not just a walk in the woods? When Debra Ramsay records each color she sees. The tangible result of such a walk is at Hansel and Gretel Picture Garden/Pocket Utopia in Chelsea, up through August 1.

Debra Ramsay's window installation on West 22nd Street

A walk in the woods, repeated seasonally as the colors change, is transposed into a grid of 72 silk squares, each painted with a hue from nature. There is a bit of the prayer flag about them, which seems entirely appropriate, allowing us to acknowledge something larger than ourselves. That we view them from a city sidewalk is not so much ironic as it is connective, a way to bring the experience to us (or us to the experience)

Two details from the installation

View from the High Line: Ramsay posted this on her Facebook page, and I knew I had to share it with you here

7.20.2014

This is the first in a series of current and recent solo exhibitions around the region. We start with the painter's painter, Brenda Goodman, at the John Davis Galleryin Hudson, New York. The exhibition, which opened last night, is up through August 10.

Brenda Goodman color coordinating with one of her small paintings on paper

The title of Goodman's new solo is called simply Brenda Goodman: Painting. Personally, I think it should be called Seeing the Light. After a dark period in her life, including the death of her partner's middle-aged son--which resulted in a series of somber and powerful paintings--Goodman has emerged a new woman. She's happy, 70 pounds lighter, and painting with a palette which, if not out-and-out joyous, embraces color and light. Light is indeed a leitmotif.

"My work has always reflected and expressed my internal life and, like myself, I feel the new paintings are bold, bright, animated, and confident,” she writes in her statement about the show. In a visit to the gallery a few days before the opening I found her almost giddy as she showed me around.

The show is on two levels. This is the view of the wall opposite where Goodman was standing

Below: full-on view of Knot, 2013, oil on wood, 80 x 72 inches

Goodman's signature elements remain--the abstracted figures, often with enormous heads atop tiny bodies; the succulently built-up surfaces; and the sense of mysterious narrative--but there are some new elements, too. For instance, instead of the dark, undefined space of her earlier works, there's a sense of architecture. And there's a knotted red shape, a presence, that dominates two of the large paintings. I like the relationship it has to the figures, particularly when it issues what appears to be a beam of yellow light. Convoluted thoughts? Difficult issues? Intestines? I ask. She doesn't say. That's OK. I'll continue to see how it develops. In the meantime, there's a lot to digest.

Links

Artists Choose Artists

Artist Annell Livingston writes about my work for the new blog, Vasari 21, founded by Ann Landi. Click pic for info and a link

Recent Solo: "Silk Road"

"Joanne Mattera: The Silk Road Series" was at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, New York, May-July. Some paintings are available for viewing at the gallery. Click pic for gallery info

Recent: August Geometry

More than just a summer show. Au-gust: adjective, respected and impressive. At the Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta. Click pic for info

Recent

I'm having a great year of exhibitions and catalogs. This volume, published by Space Gallery, Denver, on the occasion of the exhibition, "Pattern: Geometric|Organic," is viewable online and available for sale as a hard-copy volume. Click pic for exhibition info and a link to the catalog. That's my "Chromatic Geometry 29" on the cover

James Panero Reviews Doppler Shift

Writing in The New Criterion, Panero calls Doppler Shift "a smart group show, " noting the work of "artists who interest me most these days." There's a nice shout out to Mary Birmingham, the curator; to Mel Prest, who originated the concept; and to me, among others. Click pic for the review

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"Textility," curated by Mary Birmingham and myself for the Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Summit (where Birmingham is the chief curator), looked at contemporary painting, sculpture and work on paper in which textile elements were referenced or employed. The exhibition is over, but you can see this exhibition on line. Click on the links below to read and see more.

Review of Textility

Click pic to access review. Then click on page images to enlarge them for legibility

Stephen Haller: Remembering Morandi

When he was a young man, the New York art dealer Stephen Haller had a brief but life-changing friendship with Giorgio Morandi, who was nearing the end of his days. Click pic below for story.

Haller holding a photograph of himself with Morandi in the early Sixties. Click pic for story

Followers

My book, The Art of Encaustic Painting, was published by Watson-Guptill in 2001. It's the first commercially published book on contemporary encaustic. There are three sections: history, with images of the famed Greco-Egyptian Fayum portraits; a gallery of contemporary painting and sculpture (including the work of Jasper Johns, Kay WalkingStick, Heather Hutchison, Johannes Girardoni and myself), and technical information, including an interview with Michael Duffy, a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art.